Leigh Caroline's Blog

1. The standard ones- Walking, Reading, and Keeping up crits- Walked, so far for the month 2 internship books done, finished crit on one mostlydone novel, I’m about half way on another, and one waiting to start. Given as I just got asked to do that the other day, I can’t count that one against me. So far, total books read this month: 5 regular +3 crit/internship novels=8 total for the month.
2. Keep editing on SW- I got most of a pass of edits done at work last week, marking it up the way I would Kt’s drafts, which is to say, “expand here” “make this carry through” “oooh, I love this line!”. Once I’m done with that, I need to see how much the adjusting will shift things, then I have some heavy lifting rewriting to do on a few parts. Still, it’s better than a whole novel’s worth.
3. OWM.- The first post went well. I was sooooooooo incredibly nervous, but all the feedback was wonderful! So thank you!! <3 KT's up this week, and it's another creepy one. I'm going to try to make next month's story a bit more cheery!
4. Get my mornings back!- Did good with this last week. Managed to carve out at least half an hour every weekday morning for productive stuff. Combined with working on edits at work, and it was a really productive week.

The weekend was nice, even if I didn't get everything done I needed to. I made some serious dents in the To Do pile, then went out to the Zoo for mother's day with the family. Did some housecleaning, which is always good. It makes me feel less stressed when there's less clutter everywhere. Now if I can only manage to get even less crap…

Looking ahead: This week may be a bit of a madhouse, as my birthday's on Friday, and I have no idea what the plans are, if there's plans, etc. I'd be tempted to have friends over, but that involves me cooking/getting drink stuff/planning and this place is not set up for entertaining more than 5 people at a time. If I invited everyone I'd want to, it would be like 7 people. Plus have 2 or 3 of my friends I'd want to skype in from where they live.

1. The standard ones- Walking, Reading, and Keeping up crits- Walked, read 1 full for the internship and one more regular, (will have another finished today at work. I had ten pages to go Friday evening, so frustrating!), and 60% of one crit and ~25% of another. Had a bunch come in for crit close together, getting those knocked out as best I can. Had a really quick turn around (after nudging) on the internship too, which was nice. I’d had to pester, and apparently the new intern coordinator was worried about overloading. *laughs* If people only realized.. I’d rather read things for internships and critique. It may be cat vacuuming, but it makes me feel useful! Hopefully will finish those crits and the next internship book this week!

2. Keep editing on SW- I was too absorbed on other things this weekend to work on it. Though the only point this weekend I put down my kindle for any significant amount of time was to let it charge…

3. OWM.- So, OWM= Our Write Mind, a group blog KT, Becca, and I have started. I’m up first, so keep an eye out there Wednesday. The first prompt image is up already, feel free to write if inspired by the prompts! If you do, let us know! If there’s enough people participating, we’ll do a round up post as well to link to them all.

4. Get my mornings back!- This week wasn’t so good for that, mostly because I kept sleeping in. This week, trying an experiment: If I can get to bed just half an hour earlier, then I can get up at 630-7, which gives me ~4 hours before I need to get moving for work. Even assuming I take the first hour of that for shower/breakfast, I should be able to get a lot done in 3 hours! Realistically, my body clock is set right now for 730, so that’s going to take some adjusting time. It’s knocking other things out of the way of getting productive things done that I need to take care of. I timed it this morning. Waking up to leaving the bathroom after my shower (I can’t stand showering at night, it has to be in the AM) takes about 30-45 minutes, so I need to figure out quick breakfast grabs, and set a productive time start at 9am for most days.

Which means I have normally around 45 minutes to grab something to eat, pack my lunch, and get in gear.
Also, May might be a bit busier than usual around here. I’m going to help out with a blog tour thing later this month, and with OWM in there, I wanted to try a few proper blog posts in here too. We’ll see what happens, anyway!

On the plus side, the daylife has calmed down somewhat. I’m going to try to get on a more complex team at work (I shouldn’t be able to read multiple books in the course of a work week because it’s so slow. That’s a waste of their money. Granted, I’ll take it and run, but still!). I did, however, talk my manager into letting me email him files I’m working on so I can work on them while at work, so that’s a win. Something about having 3 weeks of slow in a row (they reduced our mail drop because the state we’re working for is dragging their heels about getting us the data they’ve promised us), he’s like, as long as work work gets done first, enjoy. So hopefully that’ll give me a couple hours per day worth of edit time anyway.

Ok, enough blogging, more working! Have as good of a Monday as you possibly can!!

For April:
1. The standard ones- Walked all week, one crit started (the other never appeared in my inbox), and 14 books read so far this month. I’ll probably finish the one I’m reading tonight, so I’m going to go ahead and mark this one off.
2. Outline SW2 and 3
3. Begin edits on SW1-

May goals:
1. The standard ones- Walking, Reading, and Keeping up crits.
2. Keep editing on SW- It’s frustrating. I can do these kinds of edits on others all the time… but that’s because I have to just spot the problems, not solve them. I know the problems, thanks to KT and Becca (well, and I knew some of them before I sent it over) and their wonderfulness. I spent a good amount of time brainstorming with KT yesterday, and I know what I need to do. I just have to get my brain into the story and DO it.
3. OWM.- More details to come on this very soon!!
4. Get my mornings back!- I keep having other stuff to do in the morning, and I don’t get my writing/editing time in. I need to corral that. I either need to get on task faster or rearrange what I’m doing so I can get at least half an hour of time per day of working time.

It’s been a strange month. Hoping next month is better. I’m just going to keep working on edits, and doing things for #3, and realizing… No matter how hard it seems sometimes, I look at my writing, and I love it. I have ideas that haven’t been through the ringer, and I constantly get new ideas. I get plot bunnies just from simply walking through the city. And I just have to juggle everything better. Prioritize, triage, and control what I can, and then don’t worry overmuch about things I can’t control.

1. The standard ones- Walked all week, crits caught up until the other 2 I’m waiting on land in the inbox, and 7 books read so far this month (an 8th should be done today at work, heh). Behind, but more focused on edits and life crap.
2. Outline SW2 and 3- As done as they’re getting until I do this edit pass.
3. Begin edits on SW1- Slowly wading through them. There’s a lot of stuff to do, some of it line level, some of it rewriting large chunks. Attacking what I can based on brain cells and time available. I really, really need more hours in my days sometimes.

Really, this month. Man. I will be GLAD to be done with it. In addition to the many horrible national events last week, I was stressed out about some personal life stuff. Nothing I want to really get into here, nothing bad either, exactly. Just a lot of things that need done, basically, and a lot of little frustrations adding up to a general feeling of frustration and not enough hours in the days. I’ve been on a cleaning/organizing spree at home, and social commitments have been eating up a lot of my time too.

Work’s been slow, so I’m getting bored in this job. It gets crazy busy some days, and then drops off a cliff of boredom. I think I’m going to seriously dent my paper TBR pile. (Biggest problem? We can’t use any wifi enabled devices in the work area. I have an old palm-pilot based Alphasmart dana without wifi that I would be able to transfer files to… If I can rewire it to take normal batteries because the old built in rechargeables dried out. I have instructions for it, but I just need time to sit down and do it! Mind you, I could just buy a replacement battery. I might end up doing that.)

May’s goals will be on next week’s post.

Ah, the almost end of another crazy month. It’s been one of those months where

*looks around* Oh. Apparently Big Brother doesn’t want me talking about it.

Censorship. Cispa, yet another of the Big Brother law attempts was passed by the house last week, while we were all wrapped up in the week from hell. In this variant, all the private companies you do business with, wordpress, twitter, facebook, google, etc, can share information about your activities with each other. You know all those privacy agreements you supposedly have? They’d be null and void. They can share whatever they want. “Private information” is a really wide amount of stuff. Anything transmitted through your cable company’s lines could be shared with other companies and the government. It’s like having your phone tapped at all times, or having the satellite over your head spying on your activity at all times.

What? This sounds paranoid? Exactly. It’s designed to make people paranoid so they won’t do illegal/illicit net activity. In theory, it’s intended to keep people from pirating stuff. I’ve already looked at why people pirate and what authors can do about it. The seemingly simple “solution” to piracy, from a law perspective, is to make it not worth it, with fines and threats. The only way for them to know who to punish is to somehow get around things like the 4th amendment. That’s what these kinds of bills are intended to do.
Do I agree with piracy? No. But bills like this are not the solution.

The real writemotivation post will go up tomorrow. Meanwhile, think about how much information you have put online over the past 20 years+. Then decide: Would you want the government to have access to it all?
I wouldn’t.
Already emailed my senator, adding to the chorus of folks doing the same. Think about it. Then act as you see fit.

1. The standard ones- Walked all week, one crit of a short to do (I’m planning on reading it over tonight) and so far 4 books for the month. I need to increase this speed a bit.
2. Outline SW2 and 3- The gist/blurb level outlines are done. I’d like to do a chapter by chapter outline, and I’m still not sure of the ending of 3… We’ll see. I might make it so this one can stand alone and become part of a set if it seems like they’ll buy the other books too. Otherwise, much of what I have plotted for those could be adjusted to another story idea I have running around anyway.
3. Begin edits on SW1- Started. Read through the fantastic notes Becca and KT gave me, combined it with what I was already planning, and so much work to do! There’s a few chapters that need overhaul, but far less than usual. Mostly it’s just varying sentence structure more (which is rather hard when you’re talking a sheltered 17 year old’s first person POV), pulling a few threads tighter, and emphasizing a couple of aspects that, if I do write more books in it, I could pick up then. It’s an odd bit of brain gymnastics to work with, but I think it’ll be a stronger story if it CAN stand on it’s own anyway, and just leaves them wanting more, rather than leaving them wanting more without it standing alone potentially.

This week is just as busy as usual, alas. We finally went bed shopping this weekend and bought one, and a frame to go with it. Spent a bit more than I wanted really, but I’d rather get good quality that will last a long time than have to replace it in 5 years because it sucks but it was cheap. XD That’s getting delivered later today. Work last week had some really slow points, as in I was able to quick triage the last 5 chapters of SW in a printout while at work in ONE day. Mostly not on breaks, either. I flat out asked my manager if there was anything he needed done, even errands or something. Once he said no, I was like, ok, edit time! SO I basically got paid to work on my stuff. *chuckles* Mostly because it keeps me out of his hair. Don’t get me wrong, any job is better than no job. But by the time you factor in taxes and such (really, who the hell has CITY and state taxes? That’s just cruel!), this job pays lousy and is rather boring.

I was complaining at KT last night, and told her what I’d really like to do… She thinks it’s genius. I think it’s a bit insane and overly optimistic. But I emailed a couple people I know will be objective about it and have hands on experience with part of it, and we’ll see what happens from there. I need more experience in one of the aspects anyway before I can safely attempt it. We’ll see.

Sometimes I think that’s the hardest part with this industry. It’s so much about waiting and seeing and experience. And I’m not a patient person… I like to be BUSY. The times where I have little to do, nothing gets done because I procrastinate. If I have a lot to do, I’m FAR happier.
Speaking of… *runs out the door for work*

1. The standard ones- Walked all week, no crits to do so far this month, and so far 2 books for the month (but several others started, just not finished).
2. Outline SW2 and 3- Thanks to a wonderful brainstorming session Sunday with KT, 2 is mostly figured out, at least on the broad level. Needs more complications and such, but the gist is there. Still working on 3. Hopefully will have the same high level overview done this week/weekend. I’ve been taking the approach of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, and showing it to KT and having her help me make sense of it. She’s FANTASTIC at that. XD
3. Begin edits on SW1- Pending #2.

Last week was pretty busy, but at least the weekend I caught up on some stuff. Still need to finish hanging the clothes all back up (started trying to sort the winter clothes out, ugh season changes), and need to do a general pickup again. We really need to go bed shopping. We’ve been using these inflatable air beds that are a reasonable height…. Which wear out periodically and get unbalanced. Then they get to the point if one person stands up, the other plunges to the floor because they’re suddenly displacing all the air by themselves. This drives a certain other person *coughs* completely nuts, so we’re camping out on the couch/recliner instead right now, because it’s stupid to buy another one of these when we really could just go get a proper bed. I just wanted to find a bed frame I liked first, and haven’t yet. But frankly, at this rate, I’ll take one of those little metal stands and then change things later as needed!

Apologies for the short/direct posts lately. One of these days, I’ll have more time. *laughs and runs off for work*